Starting my vacation at the University of Utah Marriott Library. Skimmed a few books. Drank my coffee and rode trax around. Planning on hitting the art museum tomorrow and museum of Natural history the day after. I am loving it. Plus being an employee... ITS ALL FREE! I spent 0.00 today. #vacation#library#drawings#leonardodavinci#free @marriottlibrary @universityofutah

Dancers, Pink & Green
Edgar Degas
1890
Oil on canvas
The heavily impastoed surface suggests that Degas worked directly and extensively on this picture, building up passages of oil paint with brushes and his fingers. By mixing his colors with white to make them opaque, and by applying his pigments thickly and in several layers, he approximated the pastel technique that he had perfected in the 1880s. Degas punctuated the composition with the shadowy profile of a top-hatted patron of the Paris Opéra, who enjoys the privilege of dallying with the dancers in the wings during a performance.
X-rays taken in 1987 reveal that the line of the stage flat on the right originally extended farther to the left, and that Degas must have added the figure of the male onlooker after changing its position.

This, I think, is a clever idea, and it might actually work. We all know that Leonardo da Vinci came up with many brilliant ideas. He made drawings of all kinds of technical devices. But there are usually good reasons for the fact that nobody actually built them. His flying machines for instance may have been ahead of their time, but didn’t actually fly. Sometimes he knew why. He noted he needed a more potent power source (he didn’t put it in those words exactly). Sometimes he did not. He often did not realise that an action has an equal reaction (but can you blame him? Newton wouldn’t tell us that for another century and a half). This contraption however does not suffer from those flaws. In fact you can buy miniature building kits to make your own. But what is it? It is a marching drum. It is a kart to be drawn by horses for instance. When pulled forward the wheels turn. Their axle makes a cogged wheel turn that then powers two cylinders. The pegs in these cylinders pull back drumsticks. When released they fall on a drum. It can drum the marching speed so soldiers can march in time. The cleverest bit is that, once you calibrate it right, it will always beat at the right speed because the faster you pull the cart, the faster the drums will play and the quicker the soldiers must march.
Design for an Automated Drum, Leonardo da Vinci, about 1493, Codex Atlantica, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.
#arthistory#artoninstagram#leonardodavinci#milan#musicmachine